Conversation Piece / Post-Colonial Gold
In Dialogue with Marina Abramović
Iconic Resonance: Maggie Maurer
Value: Vulnerable Defence / Kwetsbare Verdediging
This conversation piece enters into dialogue with Marina Abramović. Not by literally repeating the intensity of her performances, but by translating a central condition in her work: the body as a site of exposure, endurance, trust and risk.
The object contains a shark tooth estimated to be approximately 100 million years old. Set in gold and worn on horse hair, it moves between ring, pendant, relic and protective object. It is physically small, yet carries a timescale far beyond the human measure. The tooth is sharp, defensive and prehistoric; it belongs to a world before language, before culture and before the systems through which we now assign value.
Its power lies in this double reading. The tooth can be seen as a weapon, but also as a relic. It suggests danger, yet also carries survival, memory and time. It does not only threaten. It protects what is vulnerable.
Here, the meaning begins.
For decades, Marina Abramović has investigated the limits of the body, the mind and the encounter between performer and audience. In her performances, the body is often placed in situations of duration, silence, pain, trust or exposure. In her work, the body is never decoration. It becomes a place where fear, attention, endurance and transformation become visible.
This object translates that condition into a wearable sculpture: Vulnerable Defence. The shark tooth is not used as a symbol of aggression, but as a material reminder that protection often begins where vulnerability becomes real. Whoever loves, trusts or cares for another body becomes open. Defence is not always hardness. Sometimes it is the form tenderness takes when something precious is at risk.
The horse hair is essential to this. It keeps the object close to the body, the animal, ritual and the fragile boundary between strength and dependency. It prevents the piece from becoming a conventional jewel. Together with the tooth and the gold, it creates a tense construction: part amulet, part relic, part warning, part intimate bearer of time.
Maggie Maurer becomes a powerful iconic resonance for this value. Her image as model and mother introduces another register into the work: not glamour as distance, but the body as living, feeding, working and caring. The backstage image of Maurer breastfeeding during fashion week made visible what fashion often keeps outside the frame: milk, exhaustion, responsibility, tenderness, labour and the vulnerability of motherhood.
Through Maurer, the object shifts away from a simple reading of danger. The shark tooth no longer belongs only to attack or survival. It becomes connected to care. Motherhood sharpens the awareness of the body. Love makes the body more alert, more porous, more vulnerable. When another life depends on you, protection becomes instinctive, but also fragile. The defensive object is therefore not a sign of invulnerability. It marks the opposite: the intensity of having something to lose.
Abramović and Maurer do not meet through style, but through the body as a field of risk. Abramović exposes the body to time, silence, endurance and the gaze of others. Maurer brings the working maternal body into the image of fashion, where it is rarely allowed to appear without being idealised or erased. Both make visible that the body is never neutral. It carries trust, exhaustion, care, danger, strength and surrender.
Within Post-Colonial Gold, gold is not used as a sign of luxury, but as the marking of a new value system. Value does not arise here from status, possession, fame or polished beauty, but from awareness: the understanding that human life is temporary, that protection comes from vulnerability, and that the body carries forms of knowledge older than language.
As a wearable object, the piece removes a prehistoric fragment from the logic of the museum, archive, storage or private possession and brings it back into movement. A tooth that is 100 million years old appears on the body, in the street, in the image of fashion and in daily encounter. It does not become an accessory, but a wearable relic of time: a reminder that human presence is only a brief fragment within a much larger history.
Through a unique ID and QR code, the piece gains a digital layer. The work can also be viewed in an immersive environment, where the broader context remains accessible beyond the limits of place, ownership or opening hours. On the website, separate blogs open up the artist in dialogue, the iconic resonance, the value, the material reference and the thinking behind the work.
The iconic resonance is not used as celebrity endorsement, but as cultural access. It places the object within a broader visual field and allows a wider audience to approach the work through an image they may already recognise. From there, the piece leads back to the artist, the value and the questions activated by the work.
Conversation Pieces / Post-Colonial Gold makes value visible by taking art out of the museum, the depot and the closed circuit of ownership. The object is not only worn; it carries access. It becomes a physical and digital entry point into art, thinking and self-knowledge: wearable, shareable, digitally available and open beyond the boundaries of the institution or the freeport.
For our time, this value feels urgent. We live in a culture in which protection is often confused with hardness, and vulnerability with weakness. Vulnerable Defence offers another position. It reminds us that the need to protect appears most strongly precisely where love, trust and care have made us open.
Not a trophy.
A relic of protection, sharpened by love.
Each piece is handmade and unique. Small variations in finish, form and material are part of the work.
Specifications
Type: wearable sculpture / ring and pendant object
Material: prehistoric shark tooth, gold setting, horse hair
Finish: handmade; each piece is unique
Collection: Conversation Pieces / Post-Colonial Gold
Artist in dialogue: Marina Abramović
Iconic resonance: Maggie Maurer
Value: Vulnerable Defence / Kwetsbare Verdediging
Digital layer: unique ID + QR code, connected to the immersive presentation, website context and supporting blogs
Use: sculptural wearable object, handle with care
Price: €550
Shipping
Ships from Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Each piece is carefully packaged and shipped with tracking.
Because every object is handmade and unique, small variations in finish, form and material are part of the work.
Meta Description
Handmade wearable sculpture by Annelies Nuy, part of Conversation Pieces / Post-Colonial Gold, in dialogue with Marina Abramović. With Maggie Maurer as iconic resonance, the object translates the value Vulnerable Defence through a prehistoric shark tooth, gold and horse hair, connected through a unique ID and QR code to an immersive digital layer and in-depth website context.
HS code: 711790
EU commodity / CN code: 71179000
Product description: handmade imitation jewellery / wearable sculpture object made with prehistoric shark tooth, gold setting and horse hair.
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